Waste Not Want Not
by castle in the air
Summary: He’s about stability. He’s about sense. He’s about what is. And this? It’s about how giving up what you’re comfortable with can leave you something more interesting than logical boundaries and a zip locked heart. It’s about what could be. RavenxRobin
1. Prologue

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**Teen Titans is not mine. This is my first.**

**Waste Not Want Not**

_Prologue: Whether you like it or not..._

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The beautiful redhead leaned against a very tidy shoulder of black silk. She really liked how she felt like she actually fit against him, beside him, with him. One of her hands intertwined its fingers with his, which naturally reciprocated the action. He didn't look at her, but he rarely did at these functions.

The handsome black-haired youth stood like a stone wall, solid and still, clothed in a very typical and very attractive black tuxedo made of silk and stopped a sigh before it could escape. These functions bored him and he was grateful for the soft presence at his right, reassuring and always there, yielding if somewhat naïve, and never unkind. He had met her somewhere; he didn't remember exactly where but it hardly mattered. She brought him some degree of stability that he could not provide for himself and throughout it all, she would usually do it with an otherworldly smile. This was all he knew for certain and it was enough. History did not much intrigue him. In fact, he'd rather it stay hidden away from him, shadowed in the eaves of winter ice outside the shining manor.

He would rather not remember.

So he dwelled obsessively in the present, subconsciously of course. He had done a swell job of brainwashing even himself that he was alright...that everything was alright as it was. Leave well enough alone, that was the saying, right?

His blue eyes surveyed the room.

Anyone who had looked even once into those eyes knew their depths even if they did not know the depths of the person himself and many gazed into them anyway, well-knowing the result: drowning. Endless like night sky with an inner glow that radiated like crystal sun, while it wasn't merely his eyes that made him a very attractive man, they certainly made a nice beacon for the rest of him.

"Richard," an older man nodded his brief hello-goodbye, a raise of a martini glass in his direction and a half-smile and then the black back of another tuxedo, just like his. Such was the usual.

"Let's get out of here," he whispered to the redhead and brushed a very gentle, almost invisible kiss against the golden tan of his date's cheek. He could feel her smile at him and sensed her nod. He was already leading her to the coat area during her agreement to leave, hands still together, each just barely touching the other with shoulders...well, his shoulder and her head, but same difference. "Here," he handed the attendant his ticket stub with the number on it that would bring back his black wool trench and her white and pink one.

"Rae, stop that," a male voice all but whispered and the young man turned his head, as did his date, in the general direction. A young woman, presumably named Rae, closer to his age than his date's, stood next to a handsome man maybe a couple years his senior. The woman did not turn to face the man but her eyes traveled sideways in an exasperated and annoyed glare of vivid violet, like twilight. His silver-white ones glimmered back at her like he was speaking to her even though he didn't utter a word.

"I don't want to be here," she said out of the corner of her mouth, lips pressed into a firm line of irritation.

"It doesn't matter," was the short response and when the man hooked his arm forcefully with the woman's, she did not resist, though she certainly looked like she dearly wanted to. Blue eyes followed her and as though she felt them, the woman turned as she walked past Richard Grayson and his date Star Anders. Hers met his and while some moments are hours long and feel like minutes, this one was seconds and felt like years.

Then the man said something curt and slowly, as though to prove her turning her head was of her own accord and not due to any order of her escort's, the woman's eyes left Richard's in a slow stroll, briefly noting the pretty girl at his side and the glow that resonated from her. _Love_, the woman thought with a hollow pang and entered the main room, leaving blue eyes and red hair behind her.

"Richard?" Star's voice was tender and patient, as always. Apparently in her youth she had been…perhaps the expression to best describe it would be over-enthused. About everything. A little older now, a little more mature too—if no less naïve—, Star was the picture of beautiful composure, a docile lady.

"Sorry Star," he smiled down at her and placed a quick but definite kiss on her mouth, warm and fond, as he took the proffered coats from the attendant and helped Star put hers on, holding it out for her. Then, slinging his own on, they walked out of the manor.

So Richard Grayson, once Robin the boy-wonder, left his twenty-second birthday behind him, covered in snow and glittering with the life he had not asked for.

Two weeks later...

Raven perched on top of one of the many book shelves of the little shop. Shadows fell more places than light did but she found it mostly unneeded. Her vision in the dark was—for her own reasons—rather better than it was in the light. In her lap lay a first-edition copy of poetry of someone she had never run across and so far it was only love poetry, but for some reason it struck her as something different. Her tapered fingers turning the page, she fell into this next one. It was about a secret journey, about an adventure of a girl that no one else knew about, but that changed her life.

She was foolish, reading such things. She knew. But read them she did. Sighing, she swung her legs over the side of the long shelf, placing the book to one side. Just as she was about to get down, the jingling bell on the door alerted her of a new customer and instead, she turned to face them from her perch.

Blue eyes met violet.

_I remember **you**_, each said in their minds as the young man looked up at the young woman in a strangely Shakespearean sort of composition, his face in light, hers mildly shadowed.

A sudden pain seared through her head and she shifted, trying not to let on anything to the man in front of her, knocking the poetry book off the shelf, onto the floor where it landed with a clamor. It had the desired effect and the headache left her immediately as she glanced back at the young man with eyes so blue they seemed transparent, unawares of the silver-white ones watching the scene before him. Shaking off the residue of whatever moment the two had just experienced, Raven slid comfortably off the shelf, landing lightly on the floor, plucking the book up and putting it back on the shelf, probably in the wrong place too since she wasn't looking when she did it.

"Um, hi," Richard Grayson was not awkward most of the time. Most of the time he was suave and as collected as the young woman in front of him, but something was amiss that he could not identify. Hence the unusual pauses and stuttering continued. "Were you...did you...have we—" he tried. She cut him off with a quizzical stare that was carefully and controllably blank, though not unfriendly.

"Can I help you?" her voice rang clear, calm, composed and formal.

_Maybe it's not you_, his blue eyes dimmed for reasons beyond his wish to comprehend and Richard responded, "Yes, I'm looking for a book."

"We've quite a few," her voice expressed amusement even if her face did not. "Come with me," she all but ordered and his lithe form did as told, disappearing after her into the great number of shelves and old parchment pages.

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**How was that? Let me know by way of a review please. +**

**-so and so**


	2. Chapter One

**Again, TEEN TITANS is not mine...sadly. Ah well. Review onegai? Please? yep, not beyond begging. haha.**

**Thank you to me whoever you are! Your review made me very happy. It motivated me to write this. One person makes all the difference!**

**More is appreciated...dunno if that's a bad thing that I care if people review...hope not. I just like to know what people think+**

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**Waste Not, Want Not**

**Chapter One: Familiar**

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The purple-haired girl thumbed through a very haphazard stack of handwritten files.

"What title are you looking for?" she asked.

"The City in which I Love You by Li-Young Lee," he supplied.

"That's not usually something a guy asks about," amethyst eyes stared at him as she paused in her search, scrutinizing him. When he did not respond, she went back to looking and one, Richard Grayson took in every detail of the young woman standing before him as best he could. Slight build, pale, slender, shapely but not ridiculous, short hair of the most peculiar shade—he wondered if it was natural and then decided that it was, not knowing where he got the answer from—and wide luminous eyes of a similar color. Something though...something about this person clicked with something in his mind and it nagged at him as she moved from the files to an equally messy shelving system, back to him. He was about to try once more to ask her if he knew her from somewhere but a new voice broke his thoughts.

"Rae," a man nodded to her as he came out of the backroom, white-silver eyes glimmering with something otherworldly, off-setting his whitish hair nicely. The two seemed to have a thing for monochromatic schemes.

"Hello," Richard greeted in an effort to be polite. The other man's smile was more a smirk and that disconcerted the blue-eyed one.

"Malchior," the moonlit eyes watched him carefully before turning to assist Rae. _Shouldn't her name be longer?_ Richard wondered and then snapped himself away from such thoughts. How would he know, after all?

"We do have it. Sorry for the wait, come with me," Raven motioned to him and he followed wordlessly, completely aware of the burning stare her coworker was sending his way. He noted how her hair kept falling into her eyes and how she therefore kept brushing it back with her fingers, trying to tuck it futilely behind her ears. As she angled her head a certain way to scan the book titles, the light caught them just so and without thinking, he reached out to her and turned her head in his direction, holding her chin in his hand with a strange gentleness. Bewildered, her eyes looked into his as they had one evening two weeks ago and even before that...

"RAE!" Malchior seemed to loom over the two and Richard retracted his hand as if burned, his face belying none of the confusion he felt, a mask to the world and present company.

"Here's your book," her voice floated over his shoulder, and he noticed with amusement how unfazed she was by Malchior's scolding and somewhat warning tone.

"Thanks, um, sorry, I just thought you—"

"Will that be all?" Malchior's voice was worse than ice and as impassive with a great degree of foreboding laced in it.

"Is there a problem with me speaking to your coworker?" Richard asked, finally getting irritated.

"She is my employee, and yes, there is. If that's all then it would be best that you just take the book and leave," he said and though he stood leaning against a bookshelf as though without a care in the world, Richard could feel his tension.

"I'd hope you would treat your 'employee' better than that," Richard said coolly and walked past Malchior without a glance. Then, as if remembering something, he tossed the book to Raven without looking back. She caught it, perplexed.

"Didn't you..." she began.

"I'll come back some other day."

"I'm sorry, the shop will be closed indefinitely after today," Malchior's voice cut in and when Raven started to protest with more derision than anything else, he placed a hand firmly on her arm and squeezed as a caution that she well understood. Her words died on her lips. Richard's blue gaze turned to them again and not missing a beat, suddenly Malchior's hand was at his own side again.

"Fine I'll get it elsewhere then. It's a good book. You might like it, Rae," he said with a softness not common between strangers and unconsciously, she held it closer to her. And then he was out the door, bell clanging against the glass. As his form moved into nothingness away from the window, Raven whirled on her 'boss.'

"What is your problem?" she demanded, voice as close to a yell as it ever got with him.

"You know," he said without sympathy.

"He sure as Hell doesn't!" she spat, eyes raging like purple waves on a beachfront.

"I know you saw each other at the gala," his quiet statement silenced her for a few breaths but she was quick to pick up again.

"We didn't say a word, Malchior. It was a look, not even!" Raven was clutching the book fiercely without meaning to. "Must you control me so?" This last one was more pitiful than she had expected and she cursed herself for even asking.

"It was what we agreed upon, was it not?" he deftly evaded her emotional question if only to get out of showing any emotion himself.

"We agreed that they, none of them, would remember. They don't. What harm is there in this?" she knew she was pleading. Her inner self seethed. The old Raven would never do such a thing. Never.

"I don't believe in taking chances," he said plainly.

"That's obvious," her retort was cold and angry and inside, Malchior recoiled. Not all love was like that of Star Anders' and Richard Grayson's. Some love, he thought sadly, was twisted. Some love was almost so unsightly and beyond recognition that it was hate. Some love was almost invisible, but he did love Raven Roth, once the dark sorceress of the unbeatable Teen Titans. He loved her and he felt an incurable need to own her entirely. That could never be had she stayed with the titans and while how this all came about was another story completely, this was where they now stood. Instead of showing love as the one once known as Robin and now known as Nightwing might, he showed nothing at all.

"I'll see you for dinner. Don't be late," he said with a curtness that made Raven's blood simmer with upset as he strode away without a single backward glance. When she heard the door click shut Raven took the moment to notice her clenched hands and in her haste to release them, dropped the book. She cursed but her irritation subsided as she noted something sticking out of the book. Pinching it from the pages she read it over; it was a card of some sort:

Richard Grayson

9th and Evernia

10 p.m. tomorrow

Puzzled, it took the dark girl a couple minutes to digest his meaning. Exactly when he had had the chance to scrawl this so neatly and stuff it into the book, but her heart stopped in mid-fall, beginning to rise again.

_With my luck, the renowned Nightwing will have to tie up some low-life jewelry thief at 9:59_, she thought wryly but this did not diminish what for the first time in a long time felt like hope to Raven Roth. So what if the boy-blunder remembered nothing of her?

All she wanted to do was spend a little time with him. She would keep her promise to Malchior, her vow. Nothing remotely like the word 'teen' or 'titan' in singular or plural form would escape her mouth. He would know the moment she did because of the invocation laid upon her. Aside from that, she was not one for breaking a promise to anyone. It simply wasn't her style. No, she'd just go and maybe have a cup of coffee and talk about books. If he was still the Robin—no, the Richard, she amended—she remembered that he probably liked similar things she thought with a soft smile.

This was one thing she was slowly getting accustomed to. While the old Raven would not have caved beneath Malchior's order or demands, the old Raven did not smile so much either. With no power she could feel as anyone else could and her smiles, though still rare, were less so. It was still a strange feeling, that odd upward curve of the lips, but she had an idea that she knew what made it just that appealing. After the initial strangeness, it did in fact, feel quite nice. Scooping the book into her arms, she heaved it up onto the top of the book shelf and clambered onto it next, swinging her legs up after her, perched once again.

_Tomorrow at 10...it's been a while, Robin_, she mused as she flipped the book of poetry open and began to read.

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Star Anders watched her boyfriend dubiously. He'd been acting strange ever since he came back to the apartment. It wasn't anything special—the apartment—but it was enough. Two bedrooms, a kitchenette, a living area, a bathroom and a very, very small balcony sufficed for the couple. Her boyfriend tapped a pencil absently against his head, a blank piece of paper in front of him as he sat, legs bent at the knee on a stool at the counter.

He never sat at the counter.

Except tonight, he did and this was what started Star Anders worrying in the first place. Once she had been a very bubbly girl, painfully alien and equally squeamish with green eyes that had a tendency to widen to the size of saucers at everything remotely amusing, and some things that were not even remotely so.

Then she met Richard and her very teenage ways eased into an even grace that one might suspect she had been purposefully hiding. After all, being over-enthused was easier than being elegant and while both were acceptable, the first came more naturally to Star. Now she carried herself with a lush dignity that prompted men to tell Richard how fortunate he was and for other men to attempt to court her until they discovered that Richard was just that fortunate.

Richard still sat at the counter and Star sighed.

"It's one o'clock, Rich," she rested her chin on his shoulder gently. A half-smile gracing his face, he moved to kiss her softly and then with a squeeze of her hand, stretched.

"Sorry, I hadn't noticed," he said affably and put the paper away but not before Star had seen what she had suspected: a completely blank page.

"Something wrong?" she asked innocently. His blue eyes seemed to weigh odds against each other; he cared for Star and trusted her a great deal but for reasons not readily explainable, he felt his 10 o'clock rendezvous with a near-perfect stranger was not one of those things to trust his redheaded girlfriend with. So deciding, he shook his head.

"Nothing," he lied and Star knew, but left it alone. He only talked when he chose to and nothing would ever change that, she was certain. Releasing another sigh, she laid her hands on his arm and they shared a warm embrace. It was definitely loving but if anyone had been watching—and no one was of course—they would have all agreed that there was not much passion. A docile lip lock at best before they parted into separate rooms like an old married couple, but this was how it had been for quite some time and so if there was any question on either one's half, it disappeared with the next morning.

Running a hand through his ebony locks, Richard sat on the edge of his bed until he heard the usual click of Star's last light going out. He pushed the ever-pressing thoughts of a certain amethyst-eyed bookworm out of his head as he softly opened his door to reaffirm that Star had in fact gone to sleep.

A few more minutes for certainty since even he was off sometimes and then he moved soundlessly to his closet, slid the door open and up above where anyone else would bother to look, pulled down a pile of black with a faint hint of blue.

Maybe two minutes later the city protector known as Nightwing fairly soared through the metropolitan air by way of a well latched grappling gun.

And it was just like every other night.

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**Eh, more? Please let me know. I'm floundering a bit.**

**-so and so**


	3. Chapter Two

**Disclaimer: don't own teen titans of any sort**

**Review if you have time! Thank you!**

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**Waste Not, Want Not**

**Chapter 2: Rendezvous**

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Raven desperately hoped Malchior was in one of his obsessive modes. His were such that they reminded her of a certain fearless leader of what was once a group of super powered teens and as such, often consumed him. That was what she wanted, what she needed to get out without a severe interrogation this night that could potentially end up with her not leaving at all. A creak of a door eliminated those hopes.

Drat, she frowned to herself as she felt his presence move beside her. Without turning around, Raven unknowingly let Malchior know she was aware of him; her shoulders tensed visibly, back going rigid.

"Relax Raven," he all but purred in her ear. She flinched away. A melodramatic sigh brushed against her neck as he lazily swept away a section of her hair to reveal the fair and unblemished skin of her nape. "Still angry, darling?" his voice lilted in such a way that made her seethe on the edge of exploding when she felt his lips press against the side of her neck. It was a gentle kiss, a lover's kiss, t he kind of kiss that once, years ago, she might have wanted from him.

Of course, that too had been a deception and it wasn't lost on Raven that what he did now was nothing short of manipulation.

"Don't touch me," she spat and moved quickly away from the desk she had previously sat at, adding with superb malice, "I hear it's both unwise and rather vulgar for a worker to become involved with her 'boss'." The last word was an inciting entendre understood only by the two in the room.

The ice white eyes remained vexingly cool, placid, unmoved by her well aimed barb.

"Uh-uh, my bird, remember _our deal_," and the way he said it made it come out a sort of whispered threat as he approached her once again and Raven—to what would have been the shock of anyone who once knew her—did not slap him when he traced a tapered finger, a sorcerer's finger, along her jaw very slowly, very sensuously.

Very dangerously.

"That's a good girl," he murmured as, satisfied, he took a step back; he was smart enough to understand the use of personal space with someone like Raven and more than that, wise enough to use it rather than corner her further. He turned his back to her, gathering a couple books under his arm as if nothing had happened at all and walked with a long stride to the door of the shop. "I've business to attend. Lock the door behind me," he said airily and out he went.

"With pleasure," Raven scowled, rubbing her skin where he had touched with disgust. Soap simply would not do any good and at least the friction, though it made her flesh burn somewhat uncomfortably, gave her the feeling of his insidious behavior being purged from her, even if it was all a farce to make her feel better. At least it worked, sort of. Cautiously, she waited...

Five minutes, ten, twenty...

When it seemed he really would be out for a good portion of the night, Raven grabbed the book with the address of where to meet and exited the shop, locking it behind herself as she made haste through the streets on foot. Part of the Hellish bargain she'd agreed to, the admirable sorceress had given up her powers, her abilities, all of it. Sometimes she suspected some of her empathic abilities still lingered, but it could also be chalked up to extremely keen observation, which was not beyond her.

She arrived at the streets to see Richard Grayson leaning on a lamppost, the very picture of a super sleuth from an old detective movie in chipped sepia tone. His black hair was a little messy and his eyes were unreadable, but not cold. Breath catching, she approached him as if she were afraid he would disappear, or, more likely, make an excuse about having to leave and rush off to save someone from a robbery or the like. And she was afraid. Very.

It had been two years since Raven Roth had gotten he chance to see the once Boy Wonder again and it scared her to think that even this might not be any more real than a limpid daydream of hers.

Not that she daydreamed much.

"Hey, I thought you might not come," his voice interrupted her thoughts long enough for her to realize she'd stopped walking toward him and now he faced her, a confident smile on his unfairly handsome features. Whether that handsomeness was unfair to the rest of men because they had to compete with it or only to her because she was subject to it, Raven wasn't entirely squared upon, but let it go, scrambling for an excuse of her own.

"I'm sorry. I know I'm late, I um..." she faltered. What she couldn't say, was the truth_: I got held up by my insane boss who happens to be a powerful sorcerer you once encountered because I let him out of a book and now he's back and has me under a binding contract. Sorry. _No, that probably wouldn't go over well since the whole idea of it was that Robin—no, Richard—didn't know a thing about her and as such would have no reason to believe anything so fantastical, as far as she knew. Add the fact that Malchior would know the instant she spoke of the spell and that sealed it. Instead of the truth, Raven simply said, "I got lost."

Okay, that was stupid. Of all the things...

He laughed at her, to her combined relief and hurt.

"You don't need to make excuses, Miss..." It was his turn to falter and Raven thought she detected a slight flush on his cheeks.

"Raven, and no 'Miss' please. I'm not quite so refined," her gaze was admirably steady.

"Right, Raven. Sorry about that. I couldn't seem to remember your name," his blue eyes were apologetic in every way. _You wouldn't, that's the idea_, Raven thought sadly but her expression was one of pure composure. "Usually I'm better at this...I don't think I've ever forgotten someone's name in such a short time," he mused more to himself than his company.

"Well, as memorable as that makes me sound, don't sweat it," hear pokerfaced voice must have unnerved him because his eyes became downcast. Raven amended smoothly, "I mean, it's okay, I can't seem to remember yours either oddly enough!" Her tenor was unusually upbeat to cover up her entirely downbeat feeling and though she lied through her teeth, she knew it would enhance the pretense of being a stranger, well for her anyway.

For him it was not pretense at all. To him, she was a perfect stranger.

Swallowing painfully, Raven forced a sheepish laugh. This was a great deal more difficult than she had expected it to be and she wished she had meditated beforehand to calm her escalating nerves.

"Richard," he provided and offered her his hand as he said, "I know a place we can talk in more private settings." Her amethyst eyes looked at his hand as if it were a foreign object. "Come on, your boss isn't here. Trust me," he winked at her in a friendly manner reminiscent of the cocky caped traffic light she had once depended on.

"Fine, but if it's a coffeehouse, my trust will be withdrawn immediately," Raven deadpanned, a shadow of her former self shining through against all odds. Even this small similarity in tone was a risk but as she accepted his hand and was led through a series of lesser known streets, she found she cared just a smidgeon less than before.

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She sat there, suspecting her companion of knowing more than he let on as she stirred her green tea, more to distract herself than to dissolve the half teaspoon of sugar she had added ten minutes ago.

He sat there, observing her with muted interest. Why had he even asked her out here in the first place? Star was his girlfriend; clearly her boss thought of her as more than a friend to him; they didn't know each other. What had been his purpose? After sharing a lengthy silence, Richard decided the quiet would get him no answers.

"So, Raven, what is it you do?" he asked conversationally.

"I work in a bookstore," she replied flatly.

"I gathered as much. Anything else?" the blue eyed wonder continued doggedly.

"No."

Right then.

Repressing a sigh, he leaned on the table casually, one hand supporting his chin in a thinking posture. "Does your boss always treat you so badly?" He wasn't certain where this question came from except that maybe some part of him that ran around as Nightwing felt a protective nature for the girl. He figured it as a superhero complex of paranoia.

"No," she said, softer this time. _Sometimes he's worse_, she thought sadly but did not speak it. Inserting a polite cough, she tried valiantly to return his favor of courtesy by saying, "Um, what do you do?"

"Business," Richard said with a terseness that made Raven think he must mean he actually worked for Wayne Enterprises now. Not surprising, she also understood the double entendre he didn't mean to insinuate. Nightwing had business of course too, if of a different sort and with a different suit.

"Why did you ask me out here?" she inquired, finally exasperated with their inability to keep a steady conversational flow. His eyes seemed to measure her, studying her, taking in the elegant curve of her neck and the depthless quality of her twilight eyes before he answered with noticeable care.

"To be honest, I'm not sure," he said with an unsettling quietness.

"Oh," was her answer.

"Are you sure we haven't met before?" Richard pressed.

"Yes, quite," Raven nodded with more emphasis than she'd had all evening. What could the blue eyes do but believe her?

Well, they could just disbelieve her, and they did but he said nothing along those lines. Instead...

"I'd like to get to know you," he told her, smiling.

"I don't know," Raven began, Malchior looming in the darkest corners of her mind with his white silver eyes of omniscience. Richard tilted his head to the side, a little curious about her reservations. "He would not allow it."

"Your _boss_?" Richard just barely kept the venom out of his voice.

"His name is Malchior, and yes, him," Raven affirmed.

"I don't care," was the simple reply, full of truth and stubbornness, just like old times. Then his eyes clouded slightly. "Unless you don't want to," he added gently. "I know that to you I'm nothing but a stranger with a penchant for poetry."

How wrong he was, and how she wanted to tell him...but she didn't.

"It's not that I don't want to; I just can't," her tone was admirable in its evenness, no wavers to betray her rolling emotions.

There was an unmeasured pause.

"I'll walk you back," he said and raised his hand for the check.

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Richard did his best not to let his wondering eyes pry at the woman beside him, but he could not help himself. Maybe it was just her beauty, her lustrous beauty. Maybe it was the enigma that shrouded her like a scarf made of silk shadows, made of questions. Maybe...maybe it was something else. This evening had not gone as he had hoped; he had not gotten the answers he had wanted. Of course, he couldn't ask those questions that had plagued him all the last night as he flew the city as Nightwing: who are you? Why do I think I know you even when you insist otherwise? What are you hiding?

Why are you hiding...from me?

Where did that come from? Pausing, he shut his eyes and absently rubbed the bridge of his nose, oblivious to the curious stare of amethyst directed at him.

"You okay?" she asked softly and like her voice, rain started to patter down, softly. Eyes open now, he offered her a smile.

"Yeah, I'm fine," he said and then, "Do you want me to walk you home? It is late." The rain got harder as soon as he said this and the dark of the city was impenetrable.

But the dark had never scared Raven before.

"No thanks. It's best I go back alone," she said. "Thanks for the tea," and she walked away from him, feet sloshing in the puddles of the sidewalk's curve.

Raven cursed like a sailor. The rain just kept getting worse and the cold was seeping into her skin unpleasantly, like a sickness. If she had her abilities still it would have been the simplest matter of teleportation.

But she didn't have her powers.

So jostled by the pelting rain, she was caught unawares as a hand shoved her roughly to the side, causing her to fall ungracefully to the soaking concrete.

"Hey pretty lady, why you out so late all by your little self?" a somewhat dirty man approached the sprawled girl. Gathering herself back up off the ground as well as her wits, she scowled, unafraid.

"Going home," she said and turned on her heel, hard only to come face to face with another sickening sneer.

"Going where?" the eyes laughed unkindly at her and Raven could not help but notice that somehow she had been surrounded by a rather unfriendly gang of...whoever. She backed up until she was pressed against the side of the building. In the past, these guys would have been minced meat for shadows and demons...but this was the present and, presently, Raven was powerless. She brought her arms up to block them out and clamped her eyes shut, anticipating the worst and trying to think of escapes. A thud followed by a groan was heard and she cracked an eye open. The others had parted as their leader had fallen to the puddles, a huddled mass at the feet of a man with a mask...one painfully familiar man.

_Robin..._

_No, Nightwing,_ she corrected herself.

"Nowhere with you," his voice was impassive as night itself as with a fluid and martial grace he disposed of the rest of the thugs. Done, he turned to Raven.

"Thanks," she said and began to walk away. Footsteps followed her own. She turned. "What?" She wanted to get away from him, away from Robin, or Richard, or Nightwing or whatever else he called himself. She had spent too much time with him already and it was not doing anything for her peace of mind.

"I'm escorting you," still impassive, it was all but a demand.

"I'll be fine, thanks," she repeated.

"Obviously not," he replied flatly.

Opting to ignore him, she made her way back to the bookstore without further mishap. She was not surprised to hear a sudden rush of wind three feet away and then silence before she entered the bookshop. Her ears tuned in for the echo of feet on city roof tops and she wasn't sure whether she was making it up in her head from experience of really hearing him as he all but flew away.

"But really," she whispered, seemingly to no one, "You're still doing the superhero thing Robin? I expected no less." A sigh escaped her and she unlocked the door, trying not to make any noise that might alert Malchior—if he was even home yet—of her late arrival. As she made it inside, she bit back a curse as she dripped profusely on the front carpet, hoping, as she went to her room, that it would dry by morning.

She didn't feel or see the sparkling blue eyes behind a white-eyed mask, gazing at her in soft question from the rooftop above.

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Richard Grayson landed on his balcony and slid open the door with practiced ease and silence and quickly disrobed, exchanging his Nightwing cover for normal clothes. He was soaked to the bone and needed desperately to take a shower, to get a little sleep before the day truly began...he needed to do many things.

But one thing nagged at his mind.

That girl, that Raven had distinctly said something and then 'Robin'. He hadn't been certain of all she said so he might have been adding it up to nothing, but the sleuth in him would not have any of that. His detective tendencies refused to believe a recent person he'd rescued would utter that long unused name for no reason.

He needed to find out that reason.

And stepping into the heat of the shower, he resolved to do so, only then realizing that as usual, he had forgotten to take his mask of first.

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**what say you, readers? shall I keep going?**


	4. Chapter Three

**Don't own teen titans.**

**Pairings: raven and robin, when you get down to it...**

**Reason for rating: to be safe**

**Genre: not quite AU, but almost**

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**Waste Not, Want Not**

**Chapter 3: background**

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Raven pulled the books from the ramshackle cart, several at a time. Taking care to push each one onto the right shelf no further in than the surrounding ones, her tapered fingers were quick and efficient. The smell of aging parchment and various bindings permeated this bookshop.

She wasn't the only one with a fondness for old literature, as Malchior had pointed out once.

Last night she had tried her best to sleep after tossing her soaked garments in the laundry basket and throwing on loose black pajama pants and a dark blue tank top. Unable to do so, she'd found a corner of the shop that suited her mood—the darkest one—and settled down with the book she had once again forgotten to give to one Richard Grayson.

The City in which I Love You, by Li-young Lee was a small poetry collection and the empath was aware of the rareness of the hardcover she had held that night, like something made of glass.

_And when, in the city in which I love you,_

_even my most excellent song goes unanswered,_

_and I mount the scabbed streets,_

_the long shouts of avenues,_

_and tunnel sunken night in search of you..._

The poem had been striking and she could see what any person might find attractive about it, man or woman. The man, Lee, spoke of his backbreaking search, scouring every feasible place for his love, and some unfeasible, while communicating that even when he was near and she might not hear him, he continued to love, to pursue, to feel her with every beat of his estranged soul.

In a moment of what she would later call weakness, she'd fancied she herself might be a little like him as she had read on, into the night...

_That I negotiate fog, bituminous_

_rain rining like teeth into the beggar's tin,_

_or two men jackaling a third in some alley_

_weirdly lit by a couch on fire, that I _

_drag my extinction in search of you..._

He went through trials so strange they could not be described by normal words, she had noted, some being made up entirely, but it worked for him. Not all wordsmiths used orthodox means after all.

Malchior had come out during her third time through the lengthy poem, which continued admirably on for another thirty-three stanzas of anguish, loss, renewal and understanding. He had eyed the book with disdain but not stooped to taking it away. He knew the harm a book could do, the power it could instill, but his magician's eye told him everything he needed to assess about the old bound thing in her hands: it was no danger to him.

And now here she was, as if nothing had transpired that night, that day, that other night, any time really. Here she was and she was sorely miserable. Why had he had to come into her shop?

The idea was he would forget her, that all the titans would forget her, and that foolishly she would tell herself she could handle that...and pretend as long as she lived...but she had not accounted for running into any of them again personally, least of all him.

She had not accounted for so much more...

Losing her temper—a common habit of hers nowadays—she sent nearly the entire row of books scattering to the floor with one blind, sweeping motion.

The dark girl sighed.

A deceptively gentle hand brushed her cheek and she cringed. Silver white eyes frowned at this.

"Raven...why do you fear me?"

She wanted to believe he was being sincere, believe he cared...but she had done that once.

Once was enough for her.

"I don't 'fear' you. I hate you," she corrected indifferently. The gentleness disappeared and Malchior's hand forced her to face him, holding her chin possessively between his thumb and forefinger.

"Hate is not far from love, Raven," Malchior all but taunted.

"But love is far from what I feel for you," she spat, eyes glaring mutinously.

"That's too bad," he admitted and then said, "But it makes little difference considering the situation you've gotten yourself into, isn't that so my dark one?" It was a cruel whisper of magic spells and old parchment pages, the dull warning before he brought his lips harshly down upon hers.

She did not struggle, did not deny him...could not deny him.

It wasn't his undeniable skill as her traitorous body might have made people think, nor was it that she harbored feelings for him—not even him technically, she brooded—no. It was all a part of that awful vow, that promise, that deal.

Their deal.

Raven trembled as Malchior let his breath caress the nape of her neck in a disconcerting rhythm.

"It's too bad he doesn't remember you."

Ouch.

The empath only barely repressed the cry of indignant outrage beating wildly around in her chest. Barely.

"That was the idea," she said curtly. His lips lingered over her cheekbone and she closed her eyes as she felt him press them over her eyelids, like a promise of never-ending blindness, a curse.

"It's better for you, Raven. He would only have hurt you, you know...though why he ever favored the Tameranian over you I shall never understand," Malchior was honest in this. He had never seen what drew others so to Starfire.

Raven supposed that the dark magician would not understand the alien girl's affable ways and beauteous kindness, the endless forgiveness and humbleness that resided in her rather bubbly shell.

She supposed he wouldn't understand how Starfire, being happiness incarnate, or at least purity, would bring those qualities to everyone else's life she was in.

Except Raven's of course, but there was that deal again...

"That doesn't concern me," she lied to him as his left hand traveled dangerously down her side, almost careless, but too pointed to be something so uncalculated. His eyes rose to meet her now open gaze, raising an eyebrow quizzically at her as he let out an empty laugh.

"Such insolent pretense," he murmured into the crook of her neck as he brought his face to rest there. "How does it feel, Raven? How does it feel to be a character in a book full of many wondrous things and years of trial...and not have anyone you loved even so much as recognize you?" His voice had become a hiss into her ear. She flinched. "How does it feel when he tells you he's forgotten your name?"

"Stop," she tried to order him but could only beg. She hated this strange humanity that came along with the absence of her powers. It made her so mortal, so pathetic, so powerless. How she hated it.

"How," he pressed on mercilessly, "Does it feel to have the one you loved turn his back on you?" He was angry, beyond ever being morose about the subject for many years now, all he had left was rage.

"Please," she pleaded for his silence. To her surprise, he granted it with one last disparaging look into her eyes before pushing her roughly away into the bookshelf and disappearing into one of the back rooms.

Sad, angry amethyst eyes stared after him, plagued by what once almost was, what would never be, and what seemed inevitable from the very beginning.

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He slammed his fists down, sending scrolls rolling off his untidy desk and setting his many strange artifacts to rattling like shaken teeth. Running a tired hand through his hair, Malchior glowered in the dimness that sheathed his room like a metal blade cover. He treated her badly, he knew.

It wasn't really what he wanted, but it was exactly that—knowing he would never have what he really wanted—that made him act this way.

He would never have her love again, her trust. Not after the book and the confusion with Rorek and his own ungrateful and manipulative ways, his insidious nature that was both his birthright and default behavior. Malchior had not been blessed with the kindness or valiance or steadfast purity of Rorek.

His was not the path of any great virtue or quest, no noble intent or journey of redemption. No, he had simply found himself needlessly and wordlessly falling in love with the growing Raven, or at least infatuated.

Maybe if he was kinder, more—dare he even think it?—human, he scowled at the very thought, it might have been love.

It might.

But he was not. He was a dragon in a body he had gone through nameless and unnamable things to obtain and to keep, nameless and unnamable things just to get close enough to her to wrap his arms around her tiny frame and draw her close, bury his face in her hair, taste her lips...he was a man infatuated, a dangerous and powerful man of uncounted years and uncertain priorities.

Some part of him hated himself.

He wasn't all bad after all, just mostly. And that wasn't humorous in the slightest to him. If he was all evil it wouldn't be half so hard to keep up this half truth, half charade. It was true he would not release her from their deal, true he had lured her into it, tricked and then blackmailed her with something awful. It wasn't the worst thing in the world, not the end of humanity or the end of the planet even, not the destruction of anything general or worldly. No. Not that bad.

But much worse, as far as Raven was concerned.

He had, two years after the defeat of Trigon, finally found a way to manifest himself by his own means, to free himself from the spellbound pages of that accursed book. He had done it!

A sliver of a smile crept onto his lips.

That had been something worth being proud of.

Too bad he had to kill what was left of Rorek to do it.

On the up side, he had gained all of the sorcerer's power, added it to his own and pushed himself into the world of Jump City and one dangerous, gorgeous, dark Raven Roth.

He had then managed to take her friends, one by one.

Robin had been convinced it was Slade—who it might be noted would have been furiously upset he did not do what Malchior did first—which it wasn't of course. As each of the titans had gone missing it got down to just her and Robin.

The twisted dragon, now a man, had played secret witness to a scene he harbored inside him as something of a source of his hate of the boy wonder and his hate of himself. The event he saw had shown him both what Robin was capable of, what he could offer, and what he—Malchior—subsequently, could not, ever. He had made it impossible for the silver white eyed man from the get-go and Malchior despised Richard Grayson for it with an intensity only equaled by his unfathomable infatuation with Raven.

He remembered watching the two birds on top of their beloved T Tower, alone...

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_Raven pulled her arms closely around herself underneath her cloak while Robin paced furiously. First Star, then Beast Boy, then Cyborg...all of them, gone…and to where? He had no idea and it ate away at him like acid rain, slow, soft, stinging drops of it._

_"Relax Robin," she warned him more than asked. He turned on his heel to face her, anger evident in the tight way he clenched his jaw, the frown etched in the way his mask twisted at her. Timid wanted to shrink away but Courage would have none of it and Wisdom looked down its nose while Lazy slept and Rage raged—not that that ever changed—and Happiness, or Love really it depended, shook her head. Raven, all of her together, just stared at him evenly._

_"'RELAX'?" his shout echoed through what had become a ghostly part of town._

_"Yes," she said shortly, brushing an unruly section of hair behind her ear, annoyed._

_"It's just is, Raven, doesn't mean anything to you? The others could be hurt, worse, dead! We don't know who has been taking them. We don't know anything...I almost wish it was Slade," Robin fumed, livid with his anger at the absence of the other titans and the fact that his lead on Slade had led them not only to a dead end but to an end-all, be-all fact: Slade had not at all been the one capturing their friends._

_"You don't mean that," she whispered, worried suddenly. The last thing she needed was a psychotic Robin with the rest of them in God knows whose clutches. Sighing, she stepped toward him and frowned deeply when he stepped backward. She took another step. He took another step. "Stop it Robin," she ordered and flew straight for him and before he could protest she had his face cradled in her hands and she murmured, "I told you to relax." Her forehead leant against his gently and he felt a warmth emanate from her hands. Robin's blood stopped boiling and he felt a clearer head on his shoulders; it was like waking up from a bad dream or getting out of a really long, hot shower. Or both._

_"Raven?" The leader wondered what he was asking with only her name. She withdrew her hands only to have him take them in his own._

_"Robin?" The empath wondered much what he just had as she felt more than saw their hands clasped together between their two now rapidly beating hearts._

_"Raven...if..."he almost couldn't continue but plowed onward after a moment's hesitation, "If we get separated, I just want to..." he groaned. How cowardly could a superhero possibly get?_

_"You're welcome," she said._

_"What?"_

_"You were going to thank me, I think," she intuited and Robin nodded dumbly...he was going to thank her...but was that all?_

_She turned away from him, hands slipping out of his like water. Her cloak billowed away from her as she held her arms around herself again, as though to shield herself from a nonexistent cold and suddenly Robin knew exactly what he meant to say._

_He wasn't sure if it was the vulnerable look on her face that pushed him to know, or something in the way she had assumed what he meant as if to avoid hearing the truth, but whatever it was, it showed him she didn't know everything._

_Even if she was an empath._

_Raven felt heat flood her cheeks as arms wrapped firmly around her and breath tickled her right ear._

_"That wasn't everything though, Rae," he whispered. He didn't have time to think about tomorrow anymore, like had been in his most solitary moments, moments when her face would hover gently in his mind where he had once been certain Starfire's belonged. He had tried to ignore those feelings he knew rested him concerning Raven, but he could not deny them with so much happening, so much uncertainty._

_"Robin—" she began but caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of her eye and shouted loudly this time, "Robin!" and shoved him to the side. She felt white heat course through her and heard a pained scream only to realize as it died on her lips that it had been her. The next feeling was one of her body hitting cold concrete of the titan's tower roughly, her limbs limp and her breathing barely there._

_"RAVEN!" Robin ran to her._

_"That was meant for you," a voice as calm as Slade's but oddly musical, floated towards them. Robin cradled Raven's still frame in his arms._

_"You have bad aim," Robin said icily._

_"And you have something I want," Malchior had been confident back then, even knowing he might not succeed. He had circled the birds and sneered at the more conscious of the two._

_"You took the others," Robin said plainly, not an accusation, but a statement._

_"Smart too, I can see why she likes you," Malchior admitted grudgingly with sincerity in his head even if his voice was pure mockery. He approached them and reached down to touch the now unconscious empath, at which point her protector jumped backward ten feet, her still in his arms. Malchior had then laughed. Robin had bristled._

_"Stay away from her."_

_"But she is mine," Malchior reasoned in a falsely pleasant tone, as if to a three year old._

_"She is not yours," Robin seethed._

_"Well, she isn't yours," Malchior returned and his lips curved upward at the crestfallen expression that laced the young warrior's features, if only for a second._

_"Bring the others back," he tried to deter the attention._

_"I will, if you give me her," Malchior had gestured grandly at Raven. Robin's face hardened._

_"I'll find them."_

_"No, I'm afraid you won't."_

_"She'll never love you," Robin bit out, "Not after what you did to her."_

_"You being in love with her doesn't mean she's in love with you," Malchior echoed Robin's unvoiced fears. He would have said something too, if only to distract, if Raven hadn't stirred in his arms. His face lightened considerably, if still creased with worry._

_"Rae," he said softly. "Can you hear me?" Her eyes opened to look at him; Robin noted how very exhausted she seemed suddenly, how beyond her years._

_"Robin...how did he get out?" She already knew. Of course she knew. She was Raven._

_"I don't know," he said._

_"I won't let him hurt you, or the others," Raven resolved gently and fazed out of his arms, leaving Robin with nothing but air. Robin's eyes widened behind his mask as Raven reappeared in her similarly crumpled heap at Malchior's feet._

_"I won't let you take her!" Robin yelled, bow staff at hand, running toward the dark sorcerer._

_"It is not up to you," was the unkind hiss as Malchior placed a hand on a trembling Raven's shoulder and they both disappeared._

_"No!" Robin cried out._

_But they were gone, and the next day he did not remember Raven at all._

_He did not remember Raven, or Starfire, nor Cyborg and Beast Boy...least of all Malchior. For, Richard Grayson had been a fine young executive for several years now, if a reluctant one who hated paperwork like the devil. He had a girlfriend named Star with otherworldly green eyes and an alias of Nightwing under which he fought crime in the city of Jump._

_This was how it had always been, or so he woke up thinking, never questioning the singularly vexing headache he woke with, chalking it up to stress...or something._

_Raven was gone forever from him, in the way he had almost let her be on that roof before she was stolen into nothingness._

_And Malchior had been the one to do it._

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That same man paced about his cluttered room. It still burned him to remember that scene on the rooftop, their closeness, the reminder of what had not been said but what hadn't needed to be said between those two.

_How much she loved him, Robin...him and no one else_...Malchior's heart would have broken if there was enough of one left to break. As it was, he felt a dull throb but nothing more.

It wasn't that though. No he had gotten what he asked for. Raven had yielded her powers and her friends' memories.

Essentially she had given up her life in a worse way than death…Malchior knew something about fates worse than death.

He stopped pacing and crossed his arms, leaning on the edge of his table.

"Raven," he sighed to the nothing around him and of course, it did not answer.

He had even set about to placing in their memories relationships like that of Richard and Star, a perfect couple, just in case Raven ever ran into the old leader of the titans. He hadn't actually taken into account the possibility of it actually happening, not realistically, but one could never be too safe.

Star and Richard, he had made sure when doing all his cursing and casting, were what seemed the perfect couple. How could Raven think of matching that? The idea was that she couldn't and Malchior counted on that fact.

Another sigh and he sat in the hole that was his room, buried to above his head in books and scrolls.

Sometimes life was complicated, even for him.

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Star paced restlessly outside Richard's door. He hadn't come out all day; he only said very, very briefly that he'd called in sick to work and didn't feel well. That was fine in the way that least he was taking time off, but what wasn't fine was the way he kept his door shut to her.

How long had they been dating, involved? She could scarcely recall a time that they weren't and this had never happened.

Inside his room, Richard's slate blue eyes scanned the many files he was extracting from various unknown sources concerning the background and persona of a Miss Raven Roth—the girl from the bookshop, the girl he had rescued last night, the girl who had called him a name he had wished to never hear again.

_Robin._

The name had been so soft he had almost not heard it at all, disappearing off her lips like a wish and he had wondered at that. She said his name like she missed him.

Like she _knew_ him.

And that was why he had called in sick, why he had sat all day in front of various screens of computers and other technology, trying to track down a basic founding line on this girl with eyes the color of amethysts. That was why he had not spoken to anyone, save the person at work and Star, and why he had kept both conversations to about two sentences at most.

She was why and he couldn't remember a time he had been more fixated. This was odd, because the obsessive nature felt familiar, but without the sinister edge he found himself expecting, without the cold mystery of an austere and potential villain, because she, she was just a stranger.

A beautiful, complicated stranger.

So far he hadn't been able to track much on her. She was inordinately elusive. He couldn't find a blood type, or a date of birth, history of familial relations, evidence of family at all...he couldn't even find any hint of the bookshop she worked at. But that was so strange...he had seen her that night at the gala, Malchior ordering her around—his blood boiled at that but he fought it down stubbornly. He had seen her there, so they must have each been

"Richard?" Star knocked softly at his door. He sighed and deftly closed several things that looked like laptops, but were not, and hid them carefully away in his closet, which he closed before answering his door. His girlfriend's worried green eyes bore into his with a sad intensity and he felt immediately guilty for making her feel that way. She was very precious to him, but he did not show it when he got this way and one might get the distinct impression of the opposite if one didn't watch how he held her close and whispered apologies into her ear, face buried in the comfort of her long red tendrils.

"Sorry," he mumbled and felt himself relax into her arms. Star Anders was a wonder to him, beautiful and patient. She was everything a man might hope for as, on top of her virtuous qualities, she was extremely attractive. However, Richard knew, for all that she was and all that he was not, she could not fill that hole in his chest where one might save room for 'the love of a lifetime.'

For some reason, he'd never been able to bring himself to that, or allow himself that with her and he'd never been able to figure out what that reason was.

"It's okay," she replied, running her hands through his hair the way of comforting.

Star was what it was to be safe and in these days Richard found he didn't dare seek more than that. Between his secret outings as Nightwing and day job as an executive, he might have gone mad, but the comfort of her soothing gestures and seemingly endless patience kept him sane, kept him as normal as he could ever hope to be; he owed her.

Yes, he owed her...but that was not all. He liked her. He cared for her. He even loved her.

But he did not love her the precise way he suspected he should, the precise way he suspected she loved him.

And he wondered briefly if she was at all aware of the imbalance between them.

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Eh, more robin and raven next time. Thank you for the reviews!


	5. Chapter Four

**Thank you for your reviews! I really appreciate them. Hope this one's okay.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own teen titans, sadly.**

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**Waste Not, Want Not**

**Chapter 4: I would like to help you…**

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She frowned. She had been certain when she left that she had taken it with her...

Malchior.

_Damn that dragon. _

Raven had tucked the book away in her satchel and assumed it was still there, taking off for the day to spend it where she always did: in the park. It was not as dark as the places she used to frequent when a part of the teen titans, but back then she had lived in a place that was in its own way very much like a park, relatively cheerful and zany.

Now she lived in darkness and sometimes it got to her.

She sighed.

Without the book she had little else to do but people watch and beyond a certain extent, this bored her. Fortunately—or unfortunately as she would have debated if anyone asked her—the sun was doing its job in a jovial fashion that afternoon and soon waved through the leaved tree branches above her in warming rays. The natural warmth lulled her into a daze, and then into a bit of a limbo until finally her eyes drooped to a state of complete closure as a cat nap consumed her.

Cherry blossoms swirled down from the branches and they looked like pale pink snow.

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It had to have been some hours later when she woke, roused by a clamor being made by a passing group of people her age. They looked oddly familiar to her and she rubbed her eyes, distastefully flicking sleep out of them and then focused on the young adults.

Then it hit her.

Now, the thing to do was turn and walk away or better yet, pretend she was a part of the tree that she sat with her back against, now rigid, until they were completely gone.

Fate laughed at her as Richard Grayson peered past the shoulder of the very pretty redhead who was latched onto his arm, only to spot Raven, sitting as composed as composed could be.

Or like a dead duck.

Either would suffice at this point.

She groaned to herself as he beckoned her over even as his crowd continued moving, oblivious.

_As usual_, she thought with a tinge of sad recollection and pasted on her expressionless face. The easiest way to deal with things that were not meant to be dealt with, that could not be dealt with, was to pretend they didn't exist.

And it wasn't hard when they really didn't exist to anyone but you and the one being that took them away.

"Hey Rae," he greeted her, the picture of congeniality.

"Richard," she nodded tersely and heard him laugh.

"Moody?" he questioned, either not aware of or ignoring the imploring and curious looks of Star and the other two guys with them.

"Peachy," she replied stiffly. Okay, maybe she should lighten it up a bit. After all, the idea was for them _not_ to recognize her. "Where are you headed?" There, that was something she never would have done before: pursued further information that she perceived as useless.

"The mall," he said somewhat sheepishly with a faint jerk of his head in Star's direction who slapped his shoulder.

"The boys want games," Star—once the brilliant Starfire—motioned toward the other two, who Raven also recognized with a pang.

They would, she let a sad and small smile slip by. It was so small no one noticed.

Except for a certain blue eyed vigilante of the night.

But she didn't know that he noticed and so as many things that are key or pivotal, it seemed to get pushed to the backburner.

"Well I should be going," Raven said lamely and turned to go after a curt nod at Star and Richard—Starfire and Robin. She felt a flush rush through her and confusion as well when a hand laid itself firmly but insistently on her shoulder. "Don't touch me," she barely whispered. That tender gesture alone brought back a flood of memories no one else could recall and she was stricken in that moment. Richard was the only one near enough to hear both her plea and the tone in it.

He sensed the wise path would be to adhere but not inquire so he simply continued on, if a little more consciously as he removed his hand almost imperceptibly.

"Come with us," she didn't have to turn to match his voice to his unmasked eyes.

"I don't know," Raven said, continuing her reserved nature, eyes darting from one ex titan to the next.

This was not good.

"Yes, please do. I should like to know more of a friend of Richard's," Star persisted as well and Raven's response was automatic.

So not good.

"We are not friends. We had about a cumulative five minutes of conversation over an hour's worth of tea." Her voice held no emotion.

_Creepy_, her newfound peers thought in a chorus, unknowingly.

For some reason, Richard Grayson took that personally and falling into a character he wasn't entirely familiar with, he withdrew his arm from Star's gentle hold and crossed his arms.

"You don't mean that," he said with a haughtiness reminiscent of a certain boy wonder.

"Oh but I do," Raven added a scowl for effect and there was a moment in there when she thought he might have bought it.

"Come on dark girl, live a little," a simultaneously new and old voice teased and Raven flinched as if struck. The man once known to her as Cyborg took this to mean she had taken offense at the nickname and offered a mumbling apology, not knowing it was that her heart wrenched itself in two upon hearing one of his old nicknames for her.

It made her long for the past with a sharp ache she had just barely managed to push away after distancing herself from Richard's hand on her shoulder only moments before.

"Fine, but only for a bit," she conceded and there was much rejoicing, or something like it.

Not good, she thought worriedly, very much hoping Malchior wasn't in one of his gregarious moods and out on the town that day.

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"And then BOOM!" Garfield Logan—the former beast boy—excitedly gave his three companions a play by play of how he had thoroughly 'whooped' his friend Victor Stone in the most recent of arcade games. Victor being one of the three that the young man was so animatedly relaying the story to, did not find it half so amusing, protesting all the while and claiming that it was a sure fire thing the gloater had cheated.

"You kept on beating when Jinx called!" Cyborg sent him a death glare.

Raven jerked at the name and blue eyes questioned her for the millionth time that afternoon over Star's shoulder. For some reason he could not keep his eyes off of her, even in front of Star, and the redhead was beginning to notice.

"Well, you should've called her back. You know what they say, all's fair in video games and pizza!" Beast Boy said confidently. At this, Richard arched a brow at his friend.

"Pizza?" It made sense in a silly way, but come on...

"You know, always at least one person who wants the last slice but only one person can have it, total sudden-death scenario!" Beast Boy grinned widely, alluding to yet another video game, if an older one.

"Fighting for truth, justice and the last piece of pizza, how noble," Raven teased and Richard laughed. Star shot him a look that seemed to say 'what the Hell is going on here?'

It was only then that he remembered he had told his girlfriend nothing of the enigmatic bookshop employee and so it must be ten times as strange to see him so friendly so early on. He wondered if she had heard Raven's earlier comment about the tea.

As for Star, it wasn't that she had something against the dark girl, not really.

She didn't even know this 'Rae.'

It was more what she had against someone coming purposefully or otherwise between her and her boy. Star laced her arm through Richard's subtly once more and relaxed somewhat when he did not try to slip away again, even if his eyes were on the amethyst eyed girl more than she would have preferred.

"That sounds a bit dodgy," he commented to Raven conversationally. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes, but only barely. _If only you knew, boy blunder_, she thought.

"What?" his voice interrupted her thoughts.

"What?" she repeated his question.

"What did you just say? I couldn't hear you very well," he explained.

"What do you think I said?" she asked, a point to her madness this time, a sneaking worry, a hunch...

"Uh, well, I thought you called me a blunder or a blender or something," he scratched the back of his head, embarrassed.

"Nope," she lied and cursed Malchior for not doing a more thorough job of wiping the slates clean.

She still had her bond—however weak it may have become after time and separation—with the young man called Richard Grayson.

_Shit._

"Oh well, never mind," he seemed embarrassed and Raven's eyes twinkled a bit. It had always been fun to watch him squirm and he had not done it often before...this was a side of Robin she doubted existed in the old one, or was at least very effectively buried.

After the group had been utterly dragged through the mall twice over, Richard found himself asking a noticeably quiet Raven if there was anywhere she would like to go. She told him that was quite alright and that she would be on her way. He said they could all walk out with her since they were done and she agreed, but on their way to the exit a new game apparatus distracted the two louder teens and they stampeded in, a four footed mass of excitement—or two biped, whichever you might be more likely to see stuck rifling through these new items.

"I'll wait out here," she said to them in a way that suggested arguing was not wise and so there she sat, on the edge of one of the inside fountains, looking at nothing in particular, when his voice crept into her.

His voice.

"Out for play time, sweet Raven?" he whispered against her ear and she fumed.

"I am not _your_ Raven and it's none of your business," she replied tartly.

"You _are_ my business," Malchior said. He perched on the fountain ledge beside her.

"Why are you here?"

"Just keeping an eye on what is mine," he answered truthfully and looked at her thoughtfully, silver white eyes swirling in the way they got when a blue tint would shade them.

"I belong to no one," Raven said coldly as his hand reached out for her cheek and she turned her head way. His frown did not go unnoticed as she proceeded t hen to stand up as though to leave.

"We are not finished here," he warned her.

"I think we are," she ignored his warning.

"Raven," he used her normal name to snap her back to reality.

"Malchior," she returned, stubborn as a mule and much less forgiving. He advanced; she took a couple steps back and then to the right and then back toward the store the others had gone in. Her heart lurched down to her stomach at the thought of him finding them there and learning of them and perhaps getting rid of them from her life in a more permanent fashion.

In her panic, she stumbled...tripped...fell.

"Gotcha," a warm voice assured her and from behind and her spirits both lifted and plummeted at the same time. She glanced up in time to see ice betray the underlying anger of Malchior's eyes as he glared at her savior: Richard, of course. She nearly jumped away from him.

"T-thanks," she mumbled and then, "I'm sorry, I have to leave...now!" And she ran. She ran away from him hoping to draw Malchior's attention once more, to draw it away from the man who knew no more of her than her bookworm tendencies and somewhat aloof attitude, to keep them all safe as they could be any more.

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She ran and she didn't stop until she reached the tree in the park at which point she fell to her knees.

Raven let a vaguely bitter smile loose. Running really had never been her thing.

The sun had set an hour or two ago and starlight filtered across the sky, winking in and out at her, paling in the presence of a nearly full moon as slowly she gathered her legs out from under her hand settled beneath and against the tree again, much like she had done that afternoon. Pulling her knees to her, she sighed. A part of her was relieved that Malchior was not in sight and another part was worried he had stayed and caused trouble for her pseudo-new friends.

Well, they were not new to her, but she was new to them.

A grimace set itself upon her face as the twisted and painful feeling returned to her chest and shocked, she felt pressure build behind her eyes, a stinging sensation and then warm trickles escape.

She was crying.

And she hated herself the more. The old Raven did not cry, did not back down. The old Raven could take care of these things. She pulled her arms around her, feeling vulnerable and lost, wanting nothing more than to wake up from the ongoing bad dream that had such poignant moments of hope—like meeting her friends again—that having them in danger of being taken away again by Malchior made her heart break.

There was no way she could go through that again and live.

"Rae?" The voice was worried but she still flinched, drawing herself closer and further burying her face in the hiding place of her arms. "Rae, come on," the voice encouraged softly. She heard footsteps approach and tried to back away blindly until she realized she really couldn't; her back was solidly against the tree still. A familiar hand rested itself on her shoulder. "Rae, it's okay. It's just me."

She looked up and again amethyst locked with sapphire. He reached out a tentative hand and wiped away a few of her straying tears and he told her, "I waited until your boss left. I don't think he followed me." Raven refrained from saying that a sorcerer had little need to follow anyone if he really wanted something, much less Malchior, but she let it slide—not that it would make sense if she did tell him anyway. When she did not uncurl from her fetal-reminiscent position, Richard frowned. "What happened?"

"Nothing. You saw. I just wanted to get away," she lied through her teeth for what was probably the hundredth time that day, but what could she do other than that? Her entire reality was one huge secret, one huge lie.

"I don't buy that," he said obstinately and settled down in front of her, leaning on his hands as he looked at her calculatedly, some of his bangs falling into his eyes, the cheap hair gel losing its gravity-defying effects. While Raven tried to think of another excuse he questioned himself. What was he doing? He had practically abandoned the others, including an upset Star, in order to go running for the second time after this nearly perfect stranger of whom the most he knew of was her name, being 'Rae' and even that he had his suspicions about.

Where was this all supposed to lead?

He watched carefully as Raven shifted her weight, loosed her arms and sighed, pushing a section of hair behind her ear that stubbornly refused to stay put, only falling right back in front of her face again. She blew at it and scowled and that action elicited what was to be the beginning of a strange feeling in Richard Grayson. It was only the beginnings of it, but it was distinct and at that moment, while he did not know what to call it, he found it both unsettling and endearing.

Like her.

"Tell me the truth," he prompted her, eyes cutting through to her soul. Raven swallowed hard.

_Well, gee, I'd love to_, she thought wryly, _but I can't_, and this part was thought sadly. Wait, maybe she could get around the truth and be speak in half-truths...

"I'm afraid of him," she said in reference to Malchior and that at least, was completely honest of her.

Something, that strange feeling again, told him that Raven did not usually admit such things.

"Why?" he pressed gently. Her eyes flickered at him and for an instant he saw what he was never meant to see: glass-fragile darkness, pain, sadness and fear, but above all, loss. He told himself that the tight feeling in his chest was sympathy when her fair face turned to hide away from him again.

"We do not have the healthiest of relationships," she said slowly and hoped Richard was at least unlike from Robin enough to not pick up too acutely on her entirely cryptic nature.

A few minutes passed. She had the lack of foresight to think herself home-free...

"Does he hurt you?" He finally asked and his blue eyes gained a flinty edge as his voice dropped to a whisper that spoke of concern and anger at the thought. Again, she shifted uncomfortably under his gaze.

"Yes and no," Raven decided and her own purple orbs told Richard he would find out little else that night.

"You don't have to stay with him," he offered a solution to a problem he could not conceive of.

"I do," she replied softly. _For you_, she added mentally, carelessly.

"You don't have to do anything for me, much less stay with that bastard," Richard said in snap-response to her thought. She blanched and pulled her best expression of confusion.

"Why would I do that for you? I hardly know you," she said. Richard wondered briefly if he were losing his mind. Hadn't she just...didn't he hear her...

He rubbed his temples, frustrated.

"I thought you said..." he trailed off, unsure now.

"Thank you for your concern, but it can't be helped," Raven insisted with her old unmoving way that seemed familiar to Richard and he told himself it must have been how she acted the night they went out for tea, her aloof and detached tone. But he would not let her get away so easily. She stood to go and his hand reached out to clasp her wrist, not harshly, but firmly. Her eyes shot up to his, startled and to his dismay, fearful.

"I would like to help you, Rae," he persisted and he wondered at the same time why he persisted so. He hardly knew her. His life was going decently. Star was waiting for him, surely, back at the apartment.

What could he possibly have to gain from this?

But that name he had thought buried forever that escaped her lips that night when she thought herself alone still echoed in his head: _"...Robin."_

How could he ignore such a thing? The sleuth in him _could not_ and something in his soul _would not_.

"You can't," she let emotion show again, eyes welling up again. She cursed her human side and its weakness. This was not who she had grown up being, not who she was comfortable being. This breakable shell of her former self was nothing like the Raven the team once depended on for her analytical skills and strength of mind and iron will.

She was a strange unto herself.

"I will," he responded directly and to her combined horror and amazement, he pulled her to him.

_Stop, stop, stop_…his mind warned. _You have safety. You have Star. You are happy._

Something of that voice in his mind seemed not his own and one more spared scrutiny of the dark girl he held at less than arms' length told him he could not possibly be happy with such sadness in those amethyst eyes.

It broke his heart beyond reasonable means.

_For_, he reminded himself again, _we are but strangers_. Breaking down what was left of her resolve, he pulled her yet closer and Raven found herself being embraced by the man she had long thought lost to her forever. When his arms let go of her slightly, she looked up.

"You will, won't you?" she could not deny him any more. Her soul would shatter.

He nodded and held her again. It could have been a friend's embrace, a brother's, a cousin's.

It could have been.

But as often is the case, to the two bizarrely tangled birds under the cherry blossom tree, it was more and the petals that drifted down now, bathed in night and moonlight, had turned from pale pink to an otherworldly lilac. Richard wondered how long they stood there, wondered at the familiarity of her, wondered at the emotions rolling back and forth inside him, wondered at the perfect fit of her against him.

He wondered, was it worth risking such security with Star and his life now to delve into what was the real life of Rae Roth and when her slight arms finally encircled him as best they could, returning his embrace, he had his answer.

After all, it wasn't like he loved the girl…was _in love_ with her.

He only wanted to help.

That was it, of course. And he would tell Star as much.

He was, after all, telling himself that, if with an iron resolve he did not feel.

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Later that night, after he had let the shadowed girl go with a promise of meeting again at the cherry blossom tree soon, he had walked aimlessly around, trying to figure out what to say to his girlfriend he could not remember ever being without. With a set mind, he turned homeward. He told himself that Star might not like it, but she would understand, surely. He and Rae were friends and as his friend, she needed his help. Star would understand. She had to. She was, after all, the most understanding person he knew. But it must be noted that Richard Grayson had never before been faced with a jealous Star—and according to his memory, never a jealous Starfire either—and so he had little past experience to go on.

He unlocked the door, entered. There was the lovely green-eyed redhead, sitting on a stool at the kitchen's bar, chin in her hands as she glance up at his arrival. She slid off the stool with a catlike grace and walked over to him and without a word, brought him down for a kiss. After a moment's worth of this, he broke away.

"What was that for?" he asked, confused. Yelling maybe, more likely quiet hurt, but he had not at all expected that.

"Do you love me still?" she asked with unusual quiet. His heart missed a few beats, in the bad way.

"What kind of question is that?" He hated being cornered; he did it often to the villains he faced in the night or even the competitors of business during the day, but when he was cornered himself, his defenses shot up.

"I'm worried, Rich. You haven't been yourself lately. You lock yourself in your room, obsessing over who knows what and then you leave tonight for several hours, hours Richard, to go after some girl you don't even know. What is going on?" her voice broke.

"Rae is a friend. She needed...she needs my help," he offered feebly. Star's eyes switched from morose to something more driven by resentment.

"Help me to understand Richard how you are so attached to her. Is she really a stranger? Or is she an old flame maybe? Tell me, please because I feel I am missing something of grave importance here," she said in a tone he had not heard her use before: upset anger.

"I don't know, Star. She's not an old flame, she is a stranger, I am aware of how strange this seems. Hell, I think it's strangest of all, you know? But I can tell when someone needs help. I can, and I can't help but offer. You know me," he said softly and that last sentence melted her.

He said she knew him.

Star knew Rich.

Rich knew Star.

They were an immaculate couple, destined to always see the sunrise together.

That was the idea anyway and it was through no real fault of either of the young one's that neither could seem to recall what would always be the deep down truth, no matter how many times they forgot or were forced to forget.

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The deep down truth was that Richard Grayson of the flying Graysons, Robin, Dick, Nightwing, Red X...all of him, was only truly known by one person with deep violet eyes, a person who spent the night that the couple spent making up, looking at her one well hidden photograph: it had a boy with funny ears and a green coloring, a half cybernetic man, a gleeful purple clad alien with a bottle of mustard, herself, and a masked boy blunder with hardly enough fashion sense to stuff in a matchbox.

A knock came at her door.

"Go away," she said.

"Raven," Malchior sighed. He had done it again and part of him blamed it on himself while the rest he blamed on the other titans. If perchance she had never run into them again, he had the relentless belief that he might have won her over again, slowly, but surely. Now such hopes were dashed and as usual, anger was his fall back. "Raven," there was a cutting quality to his tone this time. She cracked her door open an inch after stuffing the photo under a secret compartment in her floor.

"What?" she asked. He reached hand inside her door to frame her face. She recoiled.

"Goodnight, sweet Raven," he said and with what might be mistaken as a chaste kiss on her lips, he retired to his own rooms.

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**Review if you've got a sec to do so please! Thanks and hope to get the next chapter out soon-ish. **


	6. Chapter Five

Teen titans is not mine. Rrrr.

I am really, really grateful for all the reviews I've gotten from each of you; I know I can't do separate thanks, but I am truly thankful, regardless.

**So, THANK YOU ALL!**

Thanks for waiting! Review if you have time please. Sorry it's kinda short...sigh.

And now:

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**Waste Not, Want Not**

_Chapter Five: I'm Sorry_

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He watched her from across the shop, pretending to file things that didn't need to be filed. She was putting away books, a new shipment of rarities that they sorted through themselves before sending them out to the front. She wore a tailored white collared shirt over a black spaghetti strap that had a sloping neckline and jeans that flared slightly at the bottoms, hiding her small feet. The slope of the top revealed her smooth upper torso area, collarbones delicately defined and when she turned her head to eye a shelf that was very minutely out of reach with distaste, his eyes caught a clear sight of the milky flesh of her nape.

Dragon though he may be when one got down to it, human were his longings.

"Where do you want these?" she asked, minutes later, holding a pile of first editions in her arms. Her voice was not unkind to him yet and though it may have been only because it was the beginning of the day and he had done nothing yet to upset her for those twenty-four hours, he desired to believe it might be something else. So he did.

"I'll show you," he began and when she opened her mouth to tell him just to tell her, he added, "And help." She shut her mouth and followed him to one of the middle bookshelves. A sturdy holder, she waited patiently as one or two at a time, Malchior placed each precious binding in its rightful place and watching him, she remembered some things to be liked about the mad man before her. He was without question, very beautiful, perhaps more beautiful than Robin.

No, he was more beautiful than Robin, she admitted to herself. Magical beings tended to have an otherworldly flare though, so one could not rightly compare the two. He was intelligent and well-read, appreciative of poetries and other such literary things that Raven herself adored with a passion.

He was passionate himself.

But all these paled in the face of his actions, his choices and behaviors and she found herself looking at a man with the face of betrayal once more when he plucked the last book from her outstretched arms and placed it where it was to go.

"Thank you," she begrudged him.

"Anything for you, sweet Raven," he offered her a smile she could not accept and knowing she could not accept it, withdrew it shortly thereafter, making his way back to file things that, as said before, had no need to be filed but offered him some degree of tedious distraction.

Later when he left to walk or to do business, or whatever, she did not say goodbye, but this was customary and he did not say goodbye either, in any case.

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Malchior was a stranger to everyone else on the street, the way it was intended to be. After all, it wasn't like he was human, right? The constant half-smile that was the strangely expressionless mask he wore whenever in public was something of an art form he liked to think he had perfected. Of course, he liked to think he perfected upon most things. Language, magic, behavior, decorum, manipulation, the darker of these not being something of a shame or a burden for him but more of a testament to his longstanding stubbornness that had won out something for him in the end of everything, leading always to some sort of new beginning, he liked to think all these were facets of his aim at immaculacy.

And then there was the grandeur.

This was the world he had worked for, cut for, stolen for, schemed for: this was the world he had wanted to share with a certain dark-eyed sorceress. But things were never quite so cut and dry as all of that for the two estranged beings. Having used her once, he found her less likely to trust and when he went about it in the way that he had, well he had pretty much dashed all hopes of ever regaining that trust, or anything even minutely similar, it seemed.

But then there were those moments.

There were those strange and sad and tense moments when he thought she might have smiled at him, when he suspected she might have let his hand linger on her shoulder because it was a comfort and not a burden.

He was not all bad, much as it would have made things easier for him if he were.

No, though. He was not. As twisted, as convoluted as it may have appeared, as it may have truly been, as it may truly continue to be as he stood amongst the many moving people of the bustling metropolis, his ardent care for the woman named Raven was as true as anyone's could be. The differences laid in the edges, the corners that were darkened, stained with bad choices and worse mistakes that made it both impossible to atone for and impossibly necessary for him to keep up with, else she suspect his weakness and find some way away from him.

He could not allow that a second time. Once, a folly, twice, unforgivable and unbearable. Malchior did not believe in threes. Three was a lucky number and he knew only better than Raven herself how very unlucky the situation presented itself to them and wrapped itself around the dark magic users.

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The bell on the bookstore's door jingled invitingly as he entered for the second time. He knew he shouldn't have come, even worried he might get Rae into trouble, but he had to see her. It had been three weeks since their last encounter, since he had promised to help her. He had gone back to the cherry blossom tree every day on and off, but there was no sign of her and so, thinking three weeks was enough, he set off to check on her personally, worried and more than a little apprehensive.

"Sorry, I was in the back and..." she trailed off as she saw who it was. "You shouldn't be here. Get out of here, now," Raven warned, desperately, quietly.

"Is he here?" Richard asked.

"No," Raven said and continued to try and push him away.

"Well why then?" Richard asked stubbornly and Raven shut her eyes tightly.

"He'll know you were here," she said without thinking. He arched a brow and glanced around speculatively.

"Security cameras?" He guessed and Raven was glad he had. She didn't have explanations ready.

"Yes," she nodded.

"You're lying," he said, almost surprised that he accused her and definitely surprised that he knew he was right. How could he know such a thing?

"You're not leaving," she said and it was a statement more than a question, a resignation more than an assumption.

"Not without you," he clarified and she groaned.

"Come on then, quick," she hissed at him and grabbed his arm, dragging him bodily out the door, slamming it shut and locking it before starting off at an alarming pace away from the shop.

"Late?"

"No, you are early," she said as she continued to all but parade him down a series of streets until they ended up in the park at the cherry blossom tree.

"It's been three weeks." He eyed her caustically.

"And for good reason," Raven blew a stray strand of hair out of her face in a huff.

"I couldn't wait any longer," his voice was so gentle she paused in her upset and when he laid his hand on her shoulder she did not step away.

"That much is obvious." She tried to be indifferent.

"Look, I was worried about you okay?" Now he was beginning to get annoyed. What was her problem?

"My problem is..." Raven stopped short, realizing what she had just done. Richard moved the hand that lay on her shoulder and lifted her chin so she would look at him directly, unhindered.

"How did you do that?" It was a curious question, not menacing or demanding, just curious.

Curiosity killed the cat.

Luckily, the young man's alias was a bird.

"Do what?" she feigned innocence in vain.

"Rae," he warned softly. Her eyes implored something of him, something he couldn't put his finger on quite but they were very beautiful. Richard Grayson found himself wondering if her lips were as soft as the look of them promised, wondering what it would be like to let his mouth take in the beauty he was now noticing in the hollow of her throat...

For better or worse her voice interrupted his wandering wondering.

"I...I don't know," she finally said and he seemed to accept this because he released her chin and stepped back. If he stepped back rather quickly, Raven thought he had other reasons than the real ones flashing through his head that were now asking him what the Hell he had been thinking. His mind fought with itself. It told him to remember Star.

But wasn't there something else he should be remembering?

He barely suppressed a frustrated groan. He hated mind games, especially when he felt like he was playing them on himself.

"I accept that...for now," he told her and she crossed her arms in mute defiance as if to say 'and what of later?' But he did not answer. They watched each other for what might have been ages but was really only minutes. She took in what she already knew and Richard took in what was seemingly new to him, but for some reason could not shake the familiarity of the depth of Raven's eyes and the elegance of her face. Well, to him she was only Rae of course, so Rae's eyes and so on.

"So what did you want to talk about?" she asked and he tilted his head questioningly.

"I told you I would help you," he reminded her and she frowned.

"I was...vulnerable. I should not have accepted your offer, kind though it is. I am sorry, I must be going," she moved to push past him. He grabbed her wrist. "Hey!" Her exclamation of surprise was cut off as he whirled her around to face him and she was met with a familiar, focused, unrelenting and achingly memorable stare from two endlessly blue eyes.

It was his: I won't take no for an answer, stare.

"Rae, I told you I would help you not just because I wanted to. I do. But I need to know you, don't you understand?" He paused and she thought she might interject but he brought the hand that wasn't holding her to him to cover her lips. "No, wait. I need to know you. I need to understand why it's like you can read my mind, why it's like I can read yours. I need to know why the first time I ever saw you was at that fancy shindig going down at the Wayne Manor—" Hands abruptly removed the one covering her mouth as Raven eyed him probingly.

"You remember that?" Her remark cut him off unexpectedly; she was so quiet.

"I remember," he said firmly. She was quiet again. "But you interrupted. I need to know why even though that was the first time I saw you I feel like I've seen you a million times, in pictures, in...in...I don't know where! I have to know you Rae. Please. It's making me lose my mind. I keep telling Star we're just friends, I keep telling her not to worry, that she knows me but the more I don't know you the more I am beginning to think she doesn't know me, the more I think..." he trailed off. Raven had shut her eyes and inclined her head downward, so as to avoid his piercing gaze. "Raven, look at me."

"What did you call me?"

"Rae...ven...that's your real name isn't it?" He asked in wonder, in spite of himself, not knowing how he had known, but now all the more sure of it.

"No," she lied plainly.

"Don't give me that!" He held her firmer. "I know. I can feel I'm right and...I never finished before..."

"Don't, please Robi— Richard," she caught herself but it was too late.

"And that! How could you know that? Are you a spy? A criminal? Are you both? What? And I even know already you can't be, I...the more I think about it Raven, I feel like you're the only one who knows me and that makes no sense to me. Am I losing my mind? Weren't we strangers less than two months ago?" He was vehement now and she still wasn't looking at him, not answering him. "Look at me damn it Raven, look, at, me!" He punctuated the repeated demand and lifted her chin to him once again, and was startled to see her eyes glassy and unfocused...like they had tears in them. Remorse hit him like a truck.

He had gotten carried away.

"Raven, I'm sorry, I—" She smiled sadly at him and he felt something fall for some reason, between them, as though a wall was crumbling, stubbornly but definitely as she cupped his face between her hands.

"No, _I'm _sorry Robin," and she kissed him.

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Sorry for the long wait. THANK YOU A THOUSAND TIMES TO: sekai no yakusoku. I adore your stories and I am thankful for your help on this chapter. 

-castle

Review please. And again: YAY SEKAI NO YAKUSOKU! WHOO.


	7. Chapter Six

The show is not mine, eh, you win some you lose some.

Thank you for all the reviews. I REALLY was surprised to see people like this story at all and here I am at chapter...whatever chapter this is. Bonsai! Anyway, thanks again and let me know if you liked this installment or not. It took me forever I think; I rewrote it twelve times and this one seemed the best, whatever that means...er…haha.

For those who reviewed but especially for: GrayDove, The Writer you Fools, sekai no yakusoku, and alena-chan

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**Waste Not, Want Not**

_Chapter Six: Breakthrough_

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Her lips were just as soft as promised, he decided and forewent all pretense of saying 'no' or thinking of Star when he knew he wanted this, for whatever reason; he was starved for her that in itself was, perhaps, beyond any explanation. He gently took her lower lip between his, suckling on it drawing a soft moan from her and he knew he had never felt so alive before from just a kiss, not with Star, not with anyone.

Not with anyone he could remember.

He drew her closer to him and it was his own groan escaping as she ran her fingers through his hair. And he could feel her crying, but he would not stop in his exploration of her, not that she asked him to; in fact, her actions seemed to ask for the opposite and he was all too ready to comply. Somehow he had turned her around and now worked to prop her against the trunk of the cherry blossom tree, never ceasing in kissing her, in feeling her, in getting to know every idyllic inch of the young woman named Raven. Her scent mixed with the cherry blossom tree in this wild blend of vanilla and petals and something else exotic and beyond naming. And still, he could feel the trickle of her tears against his own skin, and he wondered what broke her heart so much to make her like this even as he continued to find heaven in the nape of her neck and at the base of her throat with his lips. He was not hurting her; he knew somehow he would be able to tell instantly if he was, physically doing her harm, but what was hurting her seemed to stem from the inside.

"Why do you cry?" he asked her, bringing his face to hers again, noses touching ever so slightly.

"For what was lost," she was vague but sincere.

"You can tell me nothing else?" he asked sadly, knowingly. She shook her head.

"I'm sorry Robin," she repeated and added, "Star doesn't have to know about this." She made as if to escape him. He pinned her with his arms against the tree.

"Like Hell she doesn't. I've never felt this...this way about anyone but you!" He was shouting at the end of the sentence but he didn't care who heard. "And, and, I don't care if you can't tell me how you know I was Robin or anything, but don't run away from me, not like you run away from...from him. Don't run from me, ever," Richard both ordered and pleaded. "Don't you run from me," he repeated. His breath was short and his eyes had a glaze of passion in them incited by his closeness to her and his suddenly overwhelming urge to make her his own...as he somehow knew she ought to be. Raven traced a finger along his jaw, her own look of want and need a much sadder version.

"Listen to me, you can't help. I can't tell you what's going on or why, but you have to understand," she whispered desperately to him even though they seemed alone in the park; always she felt ears listening, eyes watching. Richard frowned deeply.

"I don't accept that," he said and she sighed.

"Robin, I know what I know and in this case it's more than you. Go back to Star," and it was something both cold and admirable in her that kept her voice from breaking with her heart.

"You don't mean that," Richard's own voice dropped to match her quiet, her vulnerability, and he searched her eyes for the truth. But Raven was a master of pretending; she needed to be. And so he found nothing like the love he sought and she, in reality, felt; he found nothing like the unending desire she felt for him that was on a short leash to keep her from kissing him again.

He found nothing at all.

"Go, Richard; forget," she told him softly and the hand that had framed his face dropped to her side. And she closed her eyes because she knew she could not bear the sight of him walking away from her forever, of losing him again, possibly forever, as she thought bleakly: you've done it before.

She opened her eyes, not feeling his presence there any longer and was startled by two very blue eyes being very close to her own amethyst ones...he hadn't left after all.

"I can't!" he replied fiercely and did what words failed to express: he brought his lips down on hers, hard and sensual. He felt like he'd been waiting years for this.

He did not know on some level, he really had.

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Star ran across the silver picture frame. The picture was from last summer. Richard had his arm draped casually about her shoulders and he had his eyes closed, caught in mid laugh. She was smiling too.

Star was not smiling outside of the picture though.

Did he love her anymore, really love her? Did he ever love her? She had her doubts now. Her brow furrowed. Something wasn't right and that something wasn't that Richard probably did not love her, much as it pained her to admit it. No, that was not it. It was something else, something that had begun to stir that night at the gala when she first saw 'Rae' and that strange man, her partner Star presumed. She had only just remembered she had seen her there at all and now the violet-eyed girl was running circles in the redhead's mind. Star had the short thought of: Rae _hates_ running.

And there was part of the problem too.

How did she, Star Anders, know that? She didn't even know the girl...right?

Green eyes shut themselves against the photograph of a far more blissful time in her remembered life as Star continued to struggle to recall what she was not meant to.

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In a dusty bookshop, silver-white eyes widened, first in shock and then fury. There was the rustling of pages as if a severe wind blew through the room and the swinging of a door on hinges, and then nothing except scattered books on the shadowed floor.

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Raven sensed him before he got there and she didn't take the precious time to ask herself how she knew; she was just glad she did. Richard's lips devoured her, starving for her, and she wanted for him to continue, very badly she did. But at the first inkling of Malchior's approach she was on defense and her resolve to keep her friends safe, whether they remembered anything really or not, strengthened tenfold. She pushed Richard back, holding him by his shoulders.

"Richard, he's coming, get out of here, please," she asked of him, pleaded even and her eyes all but demanded it. His heart was in his mouth.

"No, I won't leave you, we can't be apart, not ever again," he gestured wildly. To lose her again, to never know the perfect fit of her against him, the endlessness of her eyes, the mysteriousness of her voice...it would be too horrible.

"He will just separate us again, please, go, go to Star and live safely. I can live now at least, knowing you are safe," Raven's voice shook and she hated herself for the weakness. Richard felt his heart breaking into pieces.

"No Raven, I can't. I won't," he insisted. Raven felt Malchior's presence drawing closer very quickly.

"You must!" she cried and when she tried to push him further away he grasped her wrists in his hands.

"Stop it! Stop making me leave. This time it's not your choice Rae. It is mine." He stopped short, realizing his words and looked dumbstruck as she felt.

He remembered. One look at him and Raven knew he did. One tap into their bond and she was positively certain. One shared gaze between them and they remembered together, which was more powerful than just one of them, for Raven's constant memory fed Richard's newly recovered one...through their bond.

"The titans...oh God...Star..." he trailed off, hollow with the realization of what was going on now, what had been going on for the past two years, and the gravity of it, the consequences.

"And Vic and Gar," Raven added softly and then her mind flashed on silver-white eyes, head shooting up, alarmed.

"Malchior?" Richard sensed and she nodded.

"If you don't go and he finds you here, with me, he may..." she trailed off miserably. Richard's eyes widened.

"He would not," he said, appalled. His blue eyes flashed angrily at the very thought...if that bastard of a dragon-magician whatever the Hell he was ever hurt Raven again...

"He might," she said, cutting into his thoughts, and she let her chin drop down on her chest as she did her best to avoid Richard's direct stare. It was a bit much for her to fall into those pools of blue while impending doom in the form of Malchior was just around the corner. "He cannot stand the thought of me loving anyone else and it has not mattered because it has not been a real issue to him...until now."

"What can I do?" Richard beseeched of her. Her first instinct was that he could do nothing but she knew the outcome of using that answer; he would not budge. She forced her mind to work overtime in speeds that Kid Flash would admire if he was around, and it came to her, what to say.

"Hide, now!" she ordered him and pointed at the thick foliage of the tree above them. Without a word, he obeyed and disappeared into the petals and leaves. She felt his blue eyes stuck out sorely, but maybe it was only to her that they did so.

"Rae!" It was Malchior and she hated him for using the name that had started as an endearment from the one she loved and turned into an alias for a girl who thought she might never know love again.

But also, Raven suppressed a relieved sigh as she realized she stood alone and that Richard was staying put. For that, she was grateful.

Richard could not be seen and if Malchior did not expressly seek him out, he might well remain hidden.

"Malchior," she nodded with stiffness; no need to cause suspicion, she mused. It was lucky she was never very friendly with him.

"Where have you been?" he asked and she knew he was only pretending to be ignorant of much of what was slowly unraveling.

"Here," she replied truthfully. Wrap it in truth, she reminded herself. Those were the best kinds of lies.

"Is that so?" He leaned over her and brushed a finger under her chin. Above them, Richard seethed in the branches of the cherry blossom tree, but held his ground—or branch—and adhered to Raven's mental plea, always the same: stay where you are Robin. Stay where you are.

He stayed.

"Yes," she said and looked away sharply. At this, Malchior's expression darkened and he forced her to look back at him, cupping her face with his hands.

"Look at me and tell me what you've been up to sweet Raven. I know you are hiding something from me. I felt it," he hissed at her and she had a moment when she saw a large and fearsome dragon barreling down at her before she snapped back to reality—which wasn't much better—and glared at him, mutinous.

"You're so smart, why don't you just figure it out for yourself," she spat, scathingly.

"If you betray me..." Malchior let the threat hang in front of her eyes for a moment as he sent her graphic images of her ex-teammates possible deaths. Her mind reeled and she collapsed, her knees giving out on her as he nodded, satisfied. "We understand each other then." She felt simultaneously disgusted by her fragility and fearful for her unknowing comrades. Richard wanted to jump down and tell the formidable sorcerer to get away from Raven, to never talk to her again, to disappear, to die even.

He wanted to keep her safe.

But her voice through their bond, shaking as her physical form now did, kept telling him: no, please don't.

Please don't.

What could he do but obey? He felt his heart grow leaden as Malchior pulled Raven into his arms, lifted her from the ground, and walked away. How dare he touch you, Richard fumed, making a snap-decision, and jumped down from the tree. He looked around. Where had they gone?

_No, Robin!_ He heard her warn wildly in his mind.

But he had already jumped. It was too late.

"Hello, Grayson." Blue eyes widened as he felt more than saw the insidious curse barreling down on him in angry green waves, but he was still Nightwing.

He was still Robin.

And spryly dodging the lethal blast, he now turned to face Malchior who was—to his great displeasure—still holding Raven and at this, Richard's expression hardened with unforgiving shades. Malchior's hand was pressed firmly over her mouth to keep her silent, but still plagued with the visions of her friends' destruction, she had paled and her frame still shook visibly.

_I tried...I tried to...to warn...you_, her mind said weakly, fragmented.

A trap.

"What did you do to her?" he demanded, frightened by the trembling and vacant look in his beloved's eyes. Truly this was a different Raven than he remembered.

But he loved her as much as the memory, more so having found her again, and he took a step toward the man he hated and the woman he would die for if it came down to that.

"I simply gave her a warning. You shouldn't have come out. If you had stayed I was willing to let you live, you and your Star, your _Kori_," Malchior sneered and added the old alias of the old Starfire in for kicks. Richard bristled noticeably.

"Release her!" Richard yelled.

"Or you'll do what, send me to jail?" the sorcerer mocked dryly.

"Jail's too good for you," Richard's voice dropped to a loathing whisper and added, "So is Hell come to think of it, but I'm afraid they might be the only ones who'd take you."

"Fighting words, how quaint," Malchior's stare was a frozen one of no regrets and unspeakable deeds and Richard wanted those eyes to shut forever but his anger was interrupted by Raven who seemed to have broken from her terrified trance. She all but leapt out of Malchior's arms—to Richard's pleasure—and stood, defensive, backing away from him. "I wouldn't go too far, sweet Raven...someone might get hurt," Malchior drawled, nodding carelessly at Richard, and she halted.

"Malchior, just leave him. We...we can go away and..." she paused and looked at Richard, feeling his heart scream 'no' at her. She turned away and steeled herself as Malchior considered her next words, "And I will be yours, forever, just leave my friends be."

"Raven, no!" Richard cried, outraged and fearful all at once.

"An interesting proposal, sweet Raven and I hate to throw it away—waste not, want not, you know— but how would I bind you to it? You seem to have quite the knack for getting around even the trickiest and most complicated of deals and spells I have at my disposal," Malchior smiled falsely.

It was doubtful that Malchior would have agreed—though some part of his piecemeal heart might have—but no one would ever really know because before Raven could respond, Richard snapped at the impending possibility of Raven's absence in his life and worse, her presence in that…that monster's. He shouted something, probably just yelled something incoherent in anger really—not unlike he did once as the leader of a group of teenaged superheroes—to catch their attentions; it worked.

And heedless, he lunged. Malchior knocked him away with some indecipherable words and, enraged now herself, Raven went to aid the man she loved, to protect the friend she had so sorely missed, but Malchior was not a master sorcerer for nothing.

"No, sweet Raven, this is not your fight anymore," he said coldly. "In fact," he clicked his tongue at her, "It has nothing to do with you at all," he bit out and that broke something in her all over again; he reduced her to a pawn, to nothing once more, and as much as she hated him, part of that hate was for the fact that he could still make her ache in her heart with such words. She struggled only to find he had cast her in some invisible spell that held her where she was; it was like she was chained on a wall that didn't exist, arms above her head and wrists bound by nothing the eye could find, but they felt like heavy iron rings to her; she also felt an icy cold begin to spread through her but didn't think much of it at the moment. She watched, riveted on a scene she could not intrude on. Richard had gotten up by now and was squaring off with Malchior again like someone who knew he was outmatched but was too proud to go down without a fight, which he was and Raven wanted very much to help but she was powerless still.

But maybe not as powerless as Malchior wants me to think, she mused hopefully and she thought of the only thing she could that might help him, might even make him win.

Help. That was maybe, just maybe, the answer she sought.

_Trouble_, Raven screamed mentally and struggled to free herself from Malchior's spell. _Trouble_!

_Titans, trouble!_

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There was a voice in her head and it wasn't welcome at the moment; Star Anders had enough troubles on her mind. The picture kept changing...or so she thought. And she tried to concentrate on it, tried very hard, but that voice kept yelling in her mind, kept crying out something she couldn't quite get...

Trouble?

_...—ans, trouble!_

She angrily turned on her heel and faced the picture again, blocking out the voice as best she could.

First things first...or whatever, she thought, frowning.

Now then...

What _was_ wrong with it, the picture?

It was that same one of her and of Richard...what was wrong with it? The more she looked at it the more it looked pieced together and glued over and pasted and...unreal. The more she examined it, it seemed it wasn't her there at all, but someone of slighter frame and shorter hair. The more she scrutinized it looked like the picture should be larger and like someone, or several someones had been cut out and off of it...

"What is wrong with you?" she cried in fury and none were so shocked as Star Anders herself when she felt an amazingly intense heat build behind her eyes and saw everything in a hot green. The picture exploded, incinerated, and Star leapt...and stayed there. "Wha—?" she gasped, looking at her hands, now glowing that same green, and watching with stricken amazement as the floor moved below her, only to realize it was she moving above the floor, and then she eyed the picture frame. It was definitely busted but on closer inspection, for some reason, the picture was not...in fact it seemed to be...reforming itself?

It was like it had been...enchanted.

Or cursed.

Slowly, so slowly, it filled out to be a longer picture, wider too, and Richard now had an odd eye mask on and what Star must concede was one of the most fashionably disinclined get-ups she'd ever laid eyes on. And she'd seen quite a few, living in the city. But it didn't stop there...oh no. He had his arm around someone still, but she had been right in her earlier suspicions. It was someone slighter and with shorter hair—though the girl was still smiling. It was Rae...no, it was Raven, Star realized with the softest of heartbreak as she began to remember what was real and what had cruelly been forced upon all of them.

Now memories of who she was and the markings on her face were coming back and she saw Tameran and remembered Blackfire and many others, the Titans East and so on...and as the picture finished she saw herself with an arm nearly choking poor Beast Boy—who she knew also to be Garfield—as she seemed to be gleefully encouraging him to eat unsightly amounts of mustard. Cyborg stood watching, amused with an arched brow and a meat sandwich in one hand and the other hand helping Starfire hold Beast Boy down. Victor, she recognized thoughtfully and then a jolt went through her.

She remembered everything, the last of the memories a breakthrough hastened by her suspicion of late and that voice in her head that was getting more and more familiar..._Raven's_ voice, Star realized with a pang.

And for an instant she hesitated; a part of her was angry that Raven had come back into their lives, angry that she could not truly have Richard for herself, that he could never love her as he indubitably loved the empath. But then Starfire, alias of Kori Anders, felt decently chastened by herself alone. How could she think such things?

She would make her friend the pudding of apology later...but wait, what?

_Trouble_, the voice from before came back, more desperate this time, more clearly, and filled her mind, screaming helplessly. After an experimental turn in the air, Star—now recalled to be Starfire—flew to the sliding doors, threw them open, and veritably shot out of the small apartment she had shared with Richard Grayson for the past two years.

She had to leave that behind for now.

Her friends were in danger. She must assist.

She didn't know how she sensed this but she didn't care.

_Trouble_, Raven cried repeatedly now.

Setting any bitterness aside and disposing of useless jealousy in the face of need, Starfire focused on her honest love of her friend and the team they'd all almost forgotten forever, and plowed on faster.

Some things, it seemed, didn't change after all.

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On the other side of the city, Victor Stone and Garfield Logan argued vehemently over what game station game to play next.

"Look, tofu boy we played your game last time, it's my turn!" Stone glared and Logan shrugged impishly.

"But your games are so lame, dude," he shook his head.

"Not as lame as you!" the bigger man said.

"Want to say that again?" Garfield punched his palm emphatically.

"Yeah, I think I might!" he replied, irritated beyond belief now.

"I'm starting to think I'd be better off asking Raven to play! At least she doesn't make me play this crap!" Gar shouted finally and the two exchanged deadpanned looks.

"Raven? Who..." Stone didn't finish as he held his head in his hands and he felt what seemed to be the titanic of all sudden migraines...except that he wasn't prone to migraines, so it had to be something else. His mind blurred though and he couldn't tell what was what for the next moment but suddenly one eye could see schematics and when he flexed his hands they had a kind of metal sound as cybernetics slowly began to reappear on the young man.

"Raven...ah..." Garfield dropped to his knees as he shut his eyes. It was like there was some bright light...a very bright light, and it was dragging him every which way...he thought he was small, small as a mouse for a second...but that couldn't be because next he thought he broke the ceiling by becoming an elephant...and then maybe he hadn't because he was having a hard time breathing as he flopped on the floor like a fish out of water...and then he was him again, but as he looked at his hands, they were green...just like all of him.

And neither would ever agree on which of them was surprised the most when the strange mental onslaught and physical transformations stopped abruptly and something else entirely coursed through them both. It wasn't painful though, this...it was like...

It was like something had been purged from them.

And when they opened their eyes, they knew something had: some mental warp. It had been a dreadful and wily spell of illusion, planted in them—not unlike it had been in Kori and Richard—but now it lay broken. For now they too remembered. On top of that, they could feel they were needed.

The teen titans were needed...no...now, titans.

They could not discount the years that had passed, after all, though in a well-orchestrated charade.

But it mattered little, age...or how all this had happened.

They would go and they would fight, together. They were a team.

A shared nod and the pair shot off to grab Cyborg's ride and jet to the direction they felt they were being called in...and now they knew by who.

She had a dark way about her and a love of books and herbal tea. Her favorite color was blue and she did think Beast Boy had his funny moments, even if they were only the ones he didn't mean to be funny in. She was Raven.

And she was calling them.

They hurried to answer.

* * *

So things are escalating now. 

Nex time: there's only one titan who hasn't remembered EVERYTHING yet...and he's got no sense of fashion but he loves Raven, so we forgive him just a little. Heh.

Review if you have time, thanks!

-castle in the air

p.s. thank you sekai no yakusoku


	8. Chapter Seven

Thank you so much for all the reviews!

Dedicated to alena-chan, The Writer you Fools, Gray Dove, and sekai no yakusoku!

* * *

**Waste Not, Want Not**

_Chapter Seven: Last-ditch effort_

* * *

In the years to come, Raven, for all her incredible mental power, would not be able to recall exactly _how_ it happened, or in what order.

But she did remember _what_ happened.

"Robin!" she cried out to warn him of what looked to be a fatal blast, but she needn't have worried.

A great, fiery green mass exploded onto the scene to counter and effectively cancel out said blast and in its dissipating dust stood the Tameranian in a cotton T, jeans and sneakers, flame-red hair billowing behind her in a way that made her familiar, even in her civilian clothes.

The green sparkle in her eyes, newly lit with remembrance, ascertained the empath's guess and she forewent any caution she might have endorsed otherwise.

"Starfire!" she called out, almost overcome with the intensity that came along with being united with a dear friend she'd thought lost to her forever. The redhead flew over with all speed.

"Friend Raven," she said with some broken-heartedness in her voice, for the reunion and for the break-up she knew came with it, hand in hand. "What binds you to the air?"

"Malchior," Raven replied somberly and Starfire gasped as only she might, whirling to really get her first good look at the man she recognized from the gala all those nights ago.

"No," she breathed and cast a sideways glance to Raven.

"Go, protect him," Raven pleaded, not beyond this now that so much was at stake again, and would have gestured for Star to join Richard faster, but she needn't have. She was already there.

"Star," the dazed young man looked at her.

"Robin," she half-smiled.

"_Pay attention_ you two!" Raven shouted and they both dodged to opposite sides as Malchior sent another nasty looking hex their way.

It smelled of death.

"Do you honestly think remembering will do you any good now, titans?" he sneered, wizard hands flexing experimentally with the power they knew they could wield as if it were mere child's play...as if it were a game.

"Dude, you don't know the half of it!" a new voice taunted and a massive green tiger barreled down on him. So unexpected was this physical assault that Malchior was caught entirely unawares as Beast Boy proceeded to try and rip his head off—none too politely—but recovered quickly and sent the changeling sprawling with an explosion of screaming white. Beast Boy rubbed his side as he moved to stand where he had landed and Cyborg moved to him, standing as a safe-guard, cannon trained on Malchior.

And he would have shot too...if the damn man hadn't kept on flitting about like a hummingbird but he was fast, powerful, and without any other options. That's what made him, perhaps, the most dangerous...a man with nothing to lose—a man without his only semblance of love holding him to his last shred of humanity—was a man unimpeded by conscience, or creed, or otherwise.

He was, loosely put, unstoppable.

Somewhere in the fight that ensued though, one particular knock must have sent him for a loop because Raven felt herself fall to the concrete before she could react with an undignified thud. She stood, grateful for her freedom only long enough to find herself wishing once again that she had her powers.

"I can't _believe_ this," she fumed, muttering to herself.

A nearby lamppost veritably liquefied itself in a warped heap of metal with a sickening creak.

She arched a brow.

Maybe there was a God after all.

Other than her father, that is.

"Azarath, metrion, zinthos!" she chanted, taking her returned abilities out for a test run: sending Malchior careening into the ground from the substantial height at which he'd been evading their previous attacks with greater success than not.

The cement cracked under the impact and something happened then.

Something happened to Raven.

She didn't know exactly what. She didn't know precisely how. She certainly didn't know why.

But she felt guilty and her glowing aura subsided immediately.

_I shouldn't feel this way_, she raged at herself. Rage, herself, was having something of a free-for-all...or as much as one could in chains.

_I shouldn't care!_

But she did and she begrudgingly admitted the weakness of her human half.

She snapped back to attention as she heard a familiar mechanized whir: Cyborg was about to fire into the hole where she'd sent Malchior seconds ago...

"Wait!" she cried, angry at herself and stunned at her own voice.

And they did...more out of shock than anything else, but they stopped.

"Rae?" Cyborg questioned, dubious, cannon still at the ready.

"Don't...don't kill him," she whispered.

"But Raven!" And now it was Richard...no, Robin's anger. "You can't possibly feel sorry for this...monster? After what he's done...?" he sounded almost desperate. Desperate?

_Oh, Robin_. She understood.

"I don't love him," she reassured him immediately; his posture slackened...only a little, but it affirmed her suspicions. "Not at all," she added weakly.

"Then...?" Starfire prompted, eyeing the slowly stirring wizard with more than a little anxiety.

"I'll seal him back," Raven decided firmly.

"But...the book?" Beast Boy asked, confused.

"I don't need it."

Raven said this with such resolve that none questioned her.

They'd seen that look in her eyes before, the fight with Trigon.

And they knew what it meant.

If Raven said she could, she could.

She approached the edge of the hole where Malchior now stirred.

"R-Raven," he choked out. Her heart tightened.

"I never understood why you couldn't trust your love," Raven said, sadness now evident and Richard froze, listening. "If you hadn't...tricked me so..." she trailed off, brokenly.

"You would never have loved me! You always loved him!" Malchior shot a hand in the direction of the ex Boy Wonder whose face was unreadable now.

"I did, but...never mind. It is in the past. All things are in the past. You must join them," Raven told the sorcerer with a strange sort of gentleness.

"No! I won't leave this place again! No!" Malchior yelled, his voice distorting unnaturally as Raven began the incantation that should put him back between parchment pages. So concentrated though on the spell, she didn't notice in time when Malchior released one last spell. As she finished the words his spell grasped her around her ankles and threatened to pull her in with him.

"Raven!" Richard dashed to grab her wrist, barely getting a hold before she all but flew into the enchantment. Beast Boy secured himself somehow to the Cherry Blossom tree while holding onto Cyborg who held onto Starfire who held onto Richard who did his best to keep holding onto Raven. "Let her go!" Richard shouted in rage at Malchior, the only parts of whom he could see were the white-silver eyes, never blinking, always watching, staring, waiting for Raven to fall into imprisonment with him. "You cannot have her! She is mine!" Richard tugged harder with renewed energy and it seemed they might pull their long-lost empath back to them.

But it was not to be.

"You are only a human," Malchior spat venomously and from nowhere another tendril of the black magic snaked its way around Raven's waist and swallowed her into the vortex, Richard's hand now empty.

"No!" His heart shattered and with nothing left to lose, he detached himself from the other titans who were trying to hold him back and dove into the fast-closing black hole. It shut around him like the closing of shadowed curtains and then disappeared into nothingness, leaving a Tameranian, a bionic man, and a changeling standing with similar looks of fear and concern, helplessness and confusion.

And there was a markedly complete silence except for the distant sound of a bird that might very well have been a robin.

* * *

So sorry for the shortness and lateness of this chapter!

Review please and thank you.

-very busy castle in the air who hopes to have the next chapter out much sooner


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